Genji

Prince Genji Painting: Mono no Aware in Abstract Art

This series channels mono no aware (物の哀れ): the Japanese aesthetic of impermanence that forms the emotional core the emotional core of Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century masterpiece, The Tale of Genji. Working in layered acrylic, I build and dissolve forms across the canvas, embodying the constant flux between appearance and disappearance that defined Heian period sensibility.

Category: Literary Abstract – MONO NO AWARE

How Prince Genji Painting Embodies Impermanence

Working in restrained palettes of cream, taupe, and charcoal, with occasional traces of blue-gray and gold, these Prince Genji paintings embody presence and absence through mark and erasure. Bold calligraphic gestures float over barely-visible forms beneath, weathered surfaces where past marks ghost through like memories half-forgotten. The works evoke the cloud-patterned screens of Heian art, where veils of mist both concealed and suggested what lay beyond.

Mono no aware shaped Japanese cultural identity from the Heian period onward, representing a worldview that finds profound beauty not despite impermanence, but because of it. These paintings capture that sensibility through restraint: a courtly quietness aware of its own fragility, marks that assert themselves knowing they will fade.

Technique in Prince Genji Abstract Art

The surfaces feel ancient, as if excavated rather than made, texture that speaks of time passing, of the slow weathering that reveals what was always there. Like the cherry blossom that intensifies through brevity, each Prince Genji painting finds power in what’s withheld. A dark stroke hovers over pale ground. Faint traces dissolve into atmosphere. Forms emerge just enough to suggest, then retreat.

This is aware itself: that acute sensitivity to beauty precisely because it cannot last. The work operates through understatement, the Heian principle of yūgen (profound grace through suggestion), where what remains unspoken carries more weight than what’s declared.

This theme of aesthetic impermanence connects to the layered archaeology explored in the Poludnica series, both use paint’s physical properties to embody philosophical concepts about time and change.

byhohlik/November 22, 2025/inSERIES, about

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